The new engagement system may already prevent this, but since I don't know here's my concern anyway. It's potentially one of those "Boring but effective" tactics. If you have a fleet of many small vessels, you can potentially wear down a far superior fleet of few big ships. Engage, deploy one frigate (forcing the enemy to deploy his cruiser or so) and retreat. If you repeat this your enemy might run out of CR long before you do. Just something to consider and make unappealing.
How can complexity in the game engine be bad? It's up to Alex to transform this complexity in an enjoyable form, but the problem of modern games is not "excessive complexity" for sure.
Complexity is basically how much stuff is in a game, how many different mechanics there are and how many rules to learn. An example for a very complex game would be a fully accurate flight simulator where all keys on the keyboard have a function. Here you'll have to spend hours with the manual to even get your plane of the ground.
Depth is what arises from complexity, it is how the mechanics mesh with each other and create opportunities for the player to make important decisions and have new experiences. You need some complexity to create depth, but the art is to get as much depth as possible with as little complexity as possible. An example would be Chess, or even better the Japanese Go. You can pick up the rules within minutes, they are not complex, but nobody would say those games lack depth.
So, complexity, or rather the justified fear of complexity, is still the culprit for the blandness of many modern games. To optimally use complexity to create depth is a difficult art, something you can't easily buy with money. So a publisher has little control over this. I think from their point of view the only way to make sure a game doesn't end up too complex is to limit it so much that there's no room for depth either. (This is overly simplified of course, there are many more aspects to consider.)
If anyone wants to continue this discussion please open a new thread.